when crickets cry

i have read more in the past few months than i have in a long time. and i love it. i'd forgotten how much i genuinely love to read. mrs. krause has recommended several of the books that i've read, and i just finished "when crickets cry" upon her recommendation. it was wonderful. it was also strange for me to read. three characters in the book, emma, annie, and reese suffer from a heart condition called atrial septal defect. guess who else has asd? me. emma and annie both have severe cases of the condition, while reese's is manageable and doesn't really affect him. my condition is like his. for those of you wondering what asd is: when you're in the womb, your oxygen comes through your mother's blood. there is a hole between the top two chambers of the heart, allowing blood to flow between the chambers, because there is no need to regulate where the oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor blood goes. the hole is supposed to close up after birth, and in some cases (like mine) it doesn't. this can be a problem for a couple of reasons: more oxygen-poor blood is circulating throughout your body (making it difficult to breathe, making you tired), the hole can enlarge and create really big problems, and clots can occur if the blood isn't thin enough. in my case, the hole is tiny, and i rarely experience any side effects. i take an aspirin every day to keep my blood thin. i also have something called atrial septal aneurysm. that sounds very scary, but it just means that because of the asd, the wall between the top two chambers of my heart bulges out - a lot. it only becomes a real problem if there is leakage between the two chambers. in my case, there doesn't appear to be. because of the asd and asa, i have to take the aspirin, and anytime i have any procedure (having my teeth cleaned at the dentist, having my finger pricked - whatever it is), i have to take heavy duty antibiotics the week of the procedure, to ensure that i don't get an infection and spread the infection throughout my blood. it gets better. there is a part of your heart called the sinus node. the sinus node controlls the electrical currents in your heart that keep it beating and the rhythm in which it beats. sometimes my sinus node gets confused and causes my heart to skip a beat and jump in to an erratic and super fast (like scary fast) pulse rate. this hasn't happened for a while (thank God), but when it does it's pretty scary. it usually happens after i run or do any kind of cardio activity, although it's happened after climbing a few stairs. it doesn't become a problem unless my heart beat doesn't change back to a regular pulse. fortunately, that hasn't ever happened.

so all that said, it was a little weird for me to read a book where one of the characters dies from atrial septal defect, and where another nearly dies from the same thing. for a long time i lived in constant fear of my heart conditions, always worried that i was just going to drop dead. that sounds ridiculous, but when you have no idea any of this is going on in your body until you're 20 years old, it's pretty scary. thankfully, my conditions are not life threatening, and are completely manageable with aspirin, regular visits to the cardiologist, antibiotics, and knowing my heart. most of the time i forget i even have any of these problems, because they just don't bother me. that wasn't the case in the beginning though. i made myself sick with worry over the possibility of needing a heart transplant, having a heart attack, or rupturing the aneurysm in my heart. my cardiologist reminded me time and time again that i was okay and that i was not going to have any complications, and that i could do anything and everything that i want to do.

although i don't usually worry about my heart anymore, sometimes i still think "i wish i just had a new heart," because then i'd have nothing to worry about ever. a verse that "when crickets cry" uses over and over is ezekiel 36:26:

"moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."

i LOVE that verse. it reminds me that God is holding my heart in His hand, but also that He can fix my physical heart and my spiritual heart. it also reminds me of another verse, psalm 73:26:

"my heart and my flesh may fail me, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."

i'm so thankful that the hole in my heart wasn't just a tiny bit bigger, and that it hasn't caused life-threatening problems for me as it does for some. God's providence in my life is unbelievable. i should have a cheerful heart all the time.